Many engineers want to work on climate but don't know where to start or who to talk to. My own path ran through an air quality project (Vayu) and agritech compliance work at Dimitra. Here's what I've learned about getting in.
1. Learn enough of the domain to have good conversations
You don't need a degree. You need vocabulary:
- Mitigation vs adaptation (digital adaptation)
- Scopes 1, 2, 3 (carbon accounting)
- Physical vs transition risk (climate risk)
- Key regulations in your target market (CSRD vs EUDR vs CSDDD)
2. Join the communities
- Work on Climate: a large community of people moving into climate work
- Climatebase: jobs plus a fellowship programme
- Terra.do: courses and community
- Open-source climate projects on GitHub (search topics like "climate" and "earth-observation")
- Local climate tech meetups and events
Participate before you ask for anything.
3. Build something visible
A project in a climate domain does more than any cover letter:
- A dashboard on public climate data (open datasets)
- A remote sensing notebook (beginner's guide)
- A small tool, like a carbon or energy calculator (carbon footprint maths)
Write it up (technical blogging).
4. Informational conversations
Ask for 20 minutes, with a specific reason:
I'm a frontend engineer moving into climate tech. I read your post on [topic], and I'm curious how your team handles [specific problem]. Would you be open to a short call?
Prepare questions. Don't ask for a job in the first conversation. Do follow up with something useful.
5. Frame your skills for climate
| Skill | Climate framing |
|---|---|
| Frontend / dashboards | Making climate data usable for decisions |
| Data pipelines | Ingesting satellite, sensor, and emissions data |
| Mobile apps | Field data collection, farmer tools |
| Compliance software | Implementing environmental regulation |